


I Am A Selkie On The Sea

by scribefindegil



Series: Gravity Cove [2]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe- Selkies, Gen, Painful Narrative Parallels, References to the Child Ballads, Weirdmageddon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-08
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-07 13:53:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7717345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribefindegil/pseuds/scribefindegil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The twins may be able to use the same sealskin, but only the one born with it is the true selkie. At least, that's what Ford's been telling himself for the past 40-odd years.</p><p>Selkie AU Weirdmageddon</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel/partner fic to "I Am A Man Upon The Land." Read that one first!

It was cold in the throne room of the Fearamid. Cold and dark, and Ford shivered in the cramped cell he shared with his brother. The luminescent bars trapped them in a tiny bubble of air. Beyond, they could see the ocean and the distant impossible architecture and, far below them, the glowing red X that Bill and all his minions had used to enter the world.

But neither of them were looking. Stan had his head in his hands and Ford stared blankly at the bars in front of him. There had to be some way out. Some solution. But he was so tired and so sore and he couldn't think. He was surrounded by the sea, which should have been a comfort, but Bill had taken even that away from him.

Then Stan raised his head, reached into his jacket and pulled out Ford's sealskin. He held it out and Ford snatched it away, clutching it to himself. He'd thought it was lost. He'd thought Bill had—

“Dipper saved this,” said Stan. “He carried it for days. Through everything. Think he’d hoped to give it back to you himself, but—”

Ford curled close around the skin, tight as the spiral of a snail shell. There wasn't room in the cage to transform. He couldn't escape. But he had an anchor now. He could breathe.

Stan shook his head. “He’s gonna die. Both the kids. They’re gonna die and it’ll be my fault . . .”

“No,” said Ford. He was almost surprised to hear his own voice. He moved next to Stan and wrapped the sealskin around both their shoulders, the way the younger twins did when they needed comfort.

“I made the deal with Bill. I caused this. You would have seen right through him.”

Ford pulled out his worn flask—his other anchor—and took a long drink before passing it over.

Stan tipped back the flask. “Fine. We both ruined everything. So what do we do now?”

Ford hung his head. He’d been searching for a better answer, but there was only one thing he could think of. “I’m sorry, Stanley. I have to take his deal.”

*

When he’d offered the apprenticeship, Ford was sure that his nephew would jump at the chance to study with him. But instead the boy had fidgeted, rolling and unrolling the edge of his sealskin. The dark bulk of the submerged alien vessel loomed above them. How could Dipper turn down the opportunity to stay, to explore more places like this?

“I don’t know, man,” he said, eyes darting back and forth in the blue-green light. “It sounds . . . amazing, but there’s school, and Mabel . . .”

“What does your sister have to do with it?”

Dipper’s eyes widened. He pulled his sealskin tighter around himself. He used it as a grounding device, just like Ford did. “Well, we’ve never really been apart before—”

Ford spread his arms. “All the more reason to do it now! It's not like you can stay that way forever.”

“Well,” Dipper added. “And there’s the skin. We really—we both need it. I can’t take it away from her.”

Ford frowned. He'd seen the way both twins used the sealskin. Mabel spent her time on frivolities, splashing around near the beach with those friends she was so enamored with. She didn't appreciate what she had. But Dipper—Dipper wanted to explore. To discover. To unravel the mysteries of the deep.

“It’s your skin,” he said. “I do admire your generosity in letting your sister make use of it, though I wouldn't have recommended it had I been in this dimension to offer you advice. She can't stay dependent on something that belongs to you. You need to be your own person. You’re special, Dipper. You belong here.”

*

“There’s got to be some other way!” said Stan.

Ford shook his head. “There isn’t. Fiddleford’s Mundanity Gun isn’t powerful enough to take Bill out now that he’s achieved a physical form. And my mind is warded—” He tapped the crown of his head, feeling the ring of cold iron. “Otherwise the gun could erase him when he entered my Mindscape.”

Stan shrugged. “Okay then, so there is another way.”

“I don’t follow.”

“My mind’s not warded.”

“Well, no,” Ford snapped, “But it also contains absolutely nothing of value!” He saw his brother’s expression and stammered, “To him—to—nothing of value to him.”

Stan rolled his eyes. “For a genius you sure are slow. I’m a con artist. We con him.”

He swept off his fez and jammed it on Ford’s head, then he fluffed his hair and straightened his shoulders.

“I’ll do anything to save my family,” he said, in a passable imitation of Ford’s voice. Then, slipping back into his own low growl, he added, “Now give me your clothes. We don’t have all day.”

*

He'd seen the gun the day that he arrived, but he hadn't given it much thought beyond its immediate utility. Perhaps there was a reason for that. Now, for the second time in his life, Ford found himself looking down the barrel, trying in vain to talk down the person holding it. Dipper was just as afraid as Fiddleford had been. The green light of Ford's machinery glinted off the gun and the whites of the boy's eyes and all the accursed statues that Ford hadn't been able to bring himself to look at long enough to destroy.

“Trust no one . . . trust no one . . .”

The Mundanity Gun went off and the blast ricocheted off Ford’s head. He ignored the sting and threw himself at Dipper, grabbing the Rift in one hand and shielding the boy’s body with his own until the explosions died away. Dipper yelled and thrashed, so Ford took him by the shoulders and held him out at arm’s length.

“It’s me. Dipper, look at me. It’s your uncle.”

The boy stilled. The Mundanity Gun clattered to the ground. Dipper's voice was small and fearful. “Great Uncle Ford?”

Ford clasped his nephew’s shoulder. “Dipper, listen to me. Has anyone used this gun on you? Anyone at all?”

Dipper shook his head. “No. They—they tried, but Old Man McGucket saved us.”

Ford let out a deep sigh. _Old Man McGucket_ . . . of course he had. It seemed that even with his once-brilliant mind in tatters, Fiddleford was doing a better job of protecting his family than Ford himself could.

Dipper had given him some idea of the state his former partner was in after decades of trying to purge every trace of the supernatural from his mind. Ford swallowed. He knew he should go looking for Fiddleford, but . . . not yet. Things were still too dangerous. The rift needed to be dealt with first. Bill needed to be dealt with.

Besides, his old friend might not even remember him. A part of Ford hoped he didn't. Being forgotten was better than being hated.

“Is it dangerous?” Dipper asked. “I mean, if it just erases your memories of weird stuff . . .”

Ford shook his head. “It’s far more dangerous than that, Dipper. This device erases weirdness itself. For a normal human, it would focus on their memories, but for you and I it would be much worse. It would take away what makes us special: our ability to transform. We would become nothing more than regular humans.”

Dipper’s eyes were so wide that Ford could see the whites all the way around them. “Oh-oh my gosh!” the boy stammered. “I almost—I could have . . . Great Uncle Ford, I am so sorry!”

“It’s all right,” said Ford. “Fortunately, I took precautions against this very eventuality!” He rapped on his head. Dipper would be able to hear the ring of the cold iron even if he couldn’t see the wards carved into it. “It doesn’t work on me. I’m safe, Dipper. We’re safe.”

Ford looked down at the Rift in his hand. He was lying. They weren’t safe at all. But perhaps the boy could believe it, at least for a few short days.

*

“Listen, Stanley . . .” Ford swallowed as his brother’s nimble fingers straightened the bowtie around his neck. “If this works . . . you won’t ever be able to use the sealskin again. You’ll be stuck as a human.”

Stan’s face was expressionless. “I got thirty years with it that I didn’t deserve. It’s not like you were gonna let me use it again anyway.” He gave Ford a forced smile. “Might be better this way.”

Ford tried to open his mouth, to say no, this wasn’t what I wanted, this wasn’t what I meant, but he couldn’t seem to form the words. And he had meant it, hadn’t he? He’d been so hurt and frightened, he’d thought it was the only way things _could_ be . . . but he remembered the way the younger twins passed their skin off between them as easily as sharing a coat. He remembered how horrified Dipper had looked when Ford suggested the apprenticeship. It felt like he'd spent his whole life trying to build up a breakwater in his head, and now it was crumbling.

Stan misconstrued his expression, adding hurriedly, “Don’t worry, I’ll drop it before I shake his hand. Don’t want it getting caught in the crossfire.”

Ford didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to convey that what happened to the skin was the least of his worries, didn’t know how to express how sorry he was for everything or how brave Stan was being or how frightened he was or any of the myriad of emotions knotting up his chest. Instead, he caught his brother up in a tight hug. 

Stan froze.

“We’ll work things out afterwards,” Ford whispered. “We’ll buy a boat. We’ll go exploring together. I promise.”

Slowly, tentatively, Stan’s arms wrapped around him. They were heavy and strong, almost too big to fit into the sleeves of Ford’s coat.

“Sixer, calm down,” Stan said. “We’ll talk about it later, okay? Don’t go promising anything rash just ‘cause you’re about to shoot me.”

Ford clutched at the back of his own coat, burying his face in Stan’s shoulder. There was so much more he wanted to say, but he didn’t know how, and there wasn’t time—

The throne room shook. Stan squeezed Ford’s shoulder once, tightly, the extra stuffed finger of his glove bobbing against the loose fabric of the suit jacket. Then he stepped away and straightened his shoulders.

“Here we go. Showtime.”

*

There were plenty of places to sleep inside. Stan had offered Ford his own bed, and there was the couch in his study (what had been his study) and the cot in the basement. But none of them had even registered as possibilities. Not now that he had his skin again.

Ford slipped out of his clothes at the edge of the Portal cavern. He glanced around self-consciously, covering as much of himself as he could with his arms even though he knew there was no one watching. His hands shook when he picked up the sealskin. It had been so long. Longer by far than his mother’s skin had been hidden. What if it had been too long? What if . . .?

To silence the thoughts, he threw himself into the water. He surfaced once, gasping at the cold, and then he felt the change swell through him. It was never a feeling he could describe properly, but it was joy and comfort and coming home. The ocean would always be there, vast and dark and ready to embrace him. Stan may have ruined his house, but the sea was one thing no one could take from him. Not anymore.

Ford would have laughed if this form allowed it. Instead he dove, deep through the tunnel that led out into the open sea. This was where he was meant to be. It was like stepping out of a crowd into blessed solitude. It was like waking up refreshed after weeks of insomnia. It was like nothing else in the world.

He surfaced and bottled for a moment, looking around at the shore and the stars, feeling the night air and the salt spray on his face and the soft drift of the waves against his fur.

There was so much to do. Dismantle the Portal. Contain any dangerous anomalies it had created. Make a new plan. But he’d think about those tomorrow.

He dove again, reveling in the feel of the water rushing past him. He was himself again. He was home.

*

The throne room quaked. Ford pressed himself against the bars and held his breath. Maybe the kids had managed to get away. They’d done so many seemingly impossible things before. If only they could manage it just once more . . .

But no. Bill thundered into the room, Dipper and Mabel clutched in one fist. They were still struggling, punching and biting at the enormous hand that held them. They really never gave up, did they?

Bill maneuvered his massive bulk inside. He’d given up the sea monster form, as if he knew that no tentacled monstrosity would ever frighten Ford more than the simple well-dressed triangle that haunted his nightmares.

“TIME’S UP, FORDSY!” Bill shouted. “LOOK WHAT I FOUND!”

He waved the arm that held the kids in front of their faces. In front of Stan’s face, mostly. Gloating.

“YOU KNOW WHAT WOULD BE FUN! RAISING THE PRESSURE DOWN HERE UNTIL THEIR HEADS EXPLODE!”

He lifted another arm and the water that filled the throne room began to move, spinning in a vortex around him. He twisted his hand and the vortex shifted and shrunk, closing in on the children. They’d stopped fighting and were clinging to each other, watching in horror as the wall of water approached.

Ford wanted to cry out but his throat had shut down. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t move. Why was Stan waiting? Did he really think that Ford would allow the kids to get hurt? To get . . .

The swirling water was an orb around Dipper and Mabel. Bill pressed a thumb and finger together, ready to snap—

“Wait!”

For a split second, Ford wondered if he’d let out the cry himself. Then he looked to his side and saw Stan, standing straighter than he ever had since Ford returned, clutching at the bars and glaring up at Bill.

“I surrender!”

“ABOUT TIME!”

The vortex dissipated. Bill tossed the children away from him. They floated towards the ceiling, disappearing above the surface of the water.

Ford hunched his shoulders inside the ill-fitting suit, remembered Stan’s admonition _Don’t try to hide your hands. You’ll look suspicious. Just don’t think about them_ , and grabbed his brother by the lapels of his coat.

“Don’t do it, Ford!” he yelled. “It’ll destroy the universe!” He tried to make his voice gravelly. Making it terrified took no acting at all.

“It’s the only way!” Stan pushed him back, and Ford tripped, sprawling on the floor. Tentacles erupted from the ground and bound him in place. He watched helplessly as his brother stepped forward.

Bill laughed. “SQUABBLING UNTIL THE VERY END! IT'S PATHETIC! FUNNY, BUT PATHETIC!”

“My one condition is that you let my brother and the kids go!” Stan barked.

“SURE THING, SIXER! NOW, DO WE HAVE A DEAL?”

As frightened as he was, Ford realized that some tiny corner of his heart had begun to hope. Bill hadn’t noticed. Maybe they really could pull this off.

Then Bill snapped his fingers, and Ford felt like his heart stopped. The bars of their prison vanished and the water poured in. Ford managed to take a breath before he was submerged, but Stan wasn’t so lucky. He fell to his knees, shoulders convulsing as he tried not to inhale any more seawater.

Bill laughed. “COME ON! TIME TO PROVE YOU BELONG WITH MY FREAKS!”

With fumbling hands, Stan unhooked the sealskin from the inside of Ford’s coat. He gave one brief, inscrutable glance back at Ford, and then he took the skin in his hands and dove.

*

“When the summer’s over you give me my house back, you give me my name back, and this Mystery Shack junk is over forever! Got it?” Ford clutched the sealskin to his chest. “And you’re never touching this again!” 

There were unfamiliar scars on the pelt. Blemishes. He ran his hands over it the way he used to, the way he hadn’t been able to for thirty years, grounding himself. Yes. He was home. Finally. Stanley might have plunged the world into even graver danger, but now that Ford was back he should be able to fix it.

“Fine!” Stan yelled. “On one condition: you stay away from the kids! I don’t want them in danger!”

Ford scoffed. “You said they were sent here to learn about their heritage. That’s my business, Stanley! I’m sure you’ve been filling their heads with nonsense—”

“What, did you spend all your time at some fancy _seal school_ after you left me behind?”

Ford rounded on him. “We are not getting into this again! I can’t believe you wanted me to thank you for reactivating that portal when it’s your fault I ended up there in the first place! You clearly haven’t learned a thing since I last saw you!”

Stan drew back. He looked old. His eyes were haggard, his face wrinkled.

“Now,” said Ford, “Which one of the children is the true selkie?”

Stan's face was hard as granite. “They both are.”

Ford shook his head. “No. One skin, one selkie. That’s how it works. Who does the skin belong to? I can ask them myself if you really insist on being so bull-headed—”

“Dipper.” Stan’s shoulders slumped even more, like a sandcastle giving way to the tide. “It’s Dipper’s.”

*

No, thought Ford, his mind dull and heavy with fear. No, you have to take the clothes, he’ll notice when you turn back. They could pass for each other when they were dressed, but Stan’s body was much heavier than Ford’s. Heavier and five-fingered. It would never work. Bill would see through it the minute Stan transformed. There’d be no way to get to the handshake. It was as good as over.

He realized he’d started to hum nervously, the way their mother had taught them when they learned to swim. It kept you from getting water in your nose. He stopped humming—he had to save his air, he had to be alert—but in his head the song continued. The tune was an old lullaby, but the words that flashed among his own brittle thoughts were ones he’d found in college, when he was desperately searching for selkie stories with happy endings. He hadn’t found a single one.

_Alas, alas, this woeful fate . . ._

Stan swam slowly towards the center of the throne room to where Bill waited, bathed in the crimson light of the Rift. The demon had shrunk down to the size he’d been when Ford first encountered him. If he hadn’t known what was at stake, it would have been almost comical: the great grey seal approaching the little yellow triangle.

It was the most terrifying thing Ford had ever seen.

Any minute now Stan would shed the skin and the game would be up. Ford wanted to close his eyes, but he couldn’t make himself look away.

Bill held out a hand that glowed with blue fire.

Stan raised one dappled flipper and shook it.

_This weary fate that's laid on me . . ._

No, Ford thought. What are you doing. Turn back. Come on, turn back, please . . . there was time, there was still time. There had to be.

Bill was laughing. He left his physical form behind in a statue of granite and barnacles and rose up above their heads, then leapt with one last unearthly cackle.

Stan’s body spasmed, just once, and then he went limp. Ford stared, disbelieving, at the seal in front of him.

_And so she cried and so she sighed . . ._

Ford couldn’t think. This wasn’t supposed to happen. He was supposed to be the one to pay for his mistakes. Stan wasn’t . . . Stan couldn’t . . .

He needed some solution, some way to get out of this, something, anything except the obvious. He could destroy Bill. It would be simple. It would work. But he would destroy his brother too.

Stan knew. The bastard, he knew, and he’d let Ford think that they’d both get out of this anyway.

Ford’s bonds vanished. Moving slowly, trance-like, his hand closed around the gun in his pocket.

_And her tender heart did break in three._

Ford’s hands were shaking as he raised the gun. His lungs burned. There wasn't time to hesitate. But he couldn’t focus on what he was about to do. If he did, he wouldn’t be able to go through with it, even with the whole world at stake.

So he focused on one thing he did know. Ever since he could remember, Stan had done anything he could to protect his family.

He fired, and the shot found its mark.

The throne room shook, and in a rush the water drained away. Ford fell to his knees, gasping for breath. The Mundanity Gun clattered to the floor.

Bill was gone. 

*

The glow of the Portal faded. The tear in reality, blue as an alien ocean, closed behind him. Ford stepped forward onto the walkway, crusted with rust and barnacles. It swayed beneath his booted feet.

It was real. He was back. His brother had snatched him away from his victory, plunged the universe into even more danger. But he was back.

And there Stan was, standing in front of him, a wide, stupid grin on his face. “After thirty long years of waiting, you’re finally here!” he cried. “Brother!”

He stepped towards Ford. His arms were open wide. His hair was wet. His clothes were askew, as if he’d put them on in a hurry. And draped around his neck, dripping seawater onto the platform, was a sealskin.

Ford’s sealskin.

Thirty years. Thirty years he’d been gone, been stuck in this slow ungainly human form, been kept from the sea. And all this time Stan, the one who had pushed him into the Portal, the one who’d separated him from it in the first place, had been wearing _his skin_.

Ford clenched his fist and punched his brother in the face.

*

Ford lay on the sand, his coat drenched and his wrists bloody. He stared at the pebbles in front of him. Nothing felt real. Nothing was allowed to feel real, because when it did—

“Grunkle Stan, you did it!”

Mabel’s voice was enough to jolt him into alertness. She was running down the beach with Stan’s fez in her hands, grinning widely. Dipper called out for her to wait, but she didn’t pause. The tone of the boy’s voice was enough to tell Ford that he, at least, understood.

They raced after Mabel as she ran towards the great bull seal, her hair slipping from the confines of its braid and whipping out behind her. By the time they caught up, she was mere feet away. Ford caught her around the waist and pulled her back. She was so small and light in his arms. So young. So hopeful.

“Let me go!” she whined. “Let me see him!” And then, as the seal turned its head away, she called, “Grunkle Stan!” She sounded surprised, and hurt, but there was a note there, a hint that part of her already knew the truth.

“Mabel,” said Ford gently, as his niece squirmed and tried to break free. “Mabel, listen to me. He’s gone. That’s just a seal now. If you get too close it could hurt you.”

“No he won’t!” There was an edge of fear to her voice now. “It’s me! It’s me, Grunkle Stan!”

Put off by the loud noises behind it, the seal began to move towards the water. Ford held Mabel tight as she struggled and screamed in his arms, calling out his brother’s name with mounting desperation.

The seal reached the water’s edge, and for a moment it looked back at the three of them huddled there on the beach. Ford met its eyes, and there was nothing, no spark of anger, no hint of recognition, just the deep black eyes of a wild animal.

Mabel had fallen silent, and it was Ford who spoke, reaching out a tentative hand.

“Stan?”

But the seal turned and vanished into the water.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Ford’s eyes stung. He’d emerged dry when the world reset, and that itself felt like a blow, another reminder of everything he’d lost. His chest hurt, the old familiar ache that he’d never be able to slake now. He held the children tight in his arms, clinging to them as if they were buoys the tide might wash away from him, as if they were the last lifeboat on a sinking ship. They were all he had now. The only family he had left.

Stan had said that the night that Ford returned.

He shut his eyes, trying to hide from the emptiness of the beach. Mabel was shaking her head; he could feel her hair brush his chin, feel her body begin to shake as the sobs welled up, loud enough to drown out the crashing of the waves. Dipper cried silently, stiff and still.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to the children, to the rocks where the seal had been, to the suit that still sat large and heavy about his shoulders, because he would never be able to say it to the one person who really needed to hear it.

“It’s not your fault,” said Mabel, tremblingly, with the faith of a child.

Ford hung his head and wept.

*

Ford jolted upright at his desk. There were more words on the page than there had been a minute ago . . . he checked the clock, the only one Bill hadn’t smashed, and cursed. Fifteen minutes ago.

He was losing. No matter how much coffee he drank, no matter how often he slapped himself across the face, he was drifting off more and more frequently and for longer periods of time.

He winced as he shifted in his chair. He’d hoped the wound in his side would help keep him awake. It probably needed stitches; the rocks Bill had thrown him on were sharp. At least he’d woken up in time to avoid the boat propeller—or perhaps Bill had let him wake up. Laughing at Ford's panicked escape from the safety of his own dimension felt more like the demon's style than killing him outright. Bill wouldn't want to spoil his _fun_. Since that incident, he’d had to keep his skin locked up. He couldn’t reach the Portal room if he couldn’t transform, and as long as he couldn’t reach it Bill couldn’t either.

He laughed bitterly. It was one thing to have someone else steal your skin away, but he must be the first selkie in history to try hiding his skin from _himself_.

“Little seal came out to play, Didn’t realize he’s the prey,” the message read. It was still wet in places where his blood had clogged the pen. “Soon you’ll see what lies beneath: All my friends and all their teeth!”

Ford scratched the writing out and flung the book at the wall.

*

The handyman found them there, huddled on the beach.

“Mr. Pines!” he called as he approached. “Kids! How’d you do it, dudes? Everyone’s celebrating; you’re, like, heroes and stuff!”

No, thought Ford. Stan was the hero. He couldn’t bring himself to turn and look, to stare the stranger in the eyes and explain what had happened, what he’d done. The children pulled away from him and stood. Their clasped hands were level with his eyes, and behind them the waves continued to break on the shore.

“Dudes?”

It was Dipper who explained, his voice cracking as he spoke. Ford heard the conversation dully, the sounds muted as if he was still underwater. He heard the feeble protests, the slow realization, the loud blubbering sobs, and then he felt a new pair of arms around him. He knew he wasn’t the one they wanted to embrace, but he let them pretend, let the children and the handyman cry into the fabric of his brother’s suit. He let them have the goodbye that he never could.

It was the tide that drove them in. The tide, and the redheaded girl. She’d needed no explanation when she arrived and saw them clinging to each other, ankle-deep in the incoming waves. She was a lobsterman’s daughter, so she’d spent her whole life knowing how cruel the sea could be.

“C’mon, guys,” she said gently. “We gotta get inside.” The others stood, but Ford couldn’t move. He watched the water that flowed past his hands, back and forth, back and forth. It was as deceptive as a pendulum, and as cruel; for all it appeared balanced it did nothing but move time inexorably forward. If he stood he admitted it, admitted that the tide would keep coming and the world would keep spinning and time would keep flowing past him and Stan was gone.

He’d forget. Not the way that Fiddleford had, but the way he couldn’t escape, as time wore down his memories like seaglass, broke and blurred the details away. He’d lose even the recollections of his brother until he’d need photographs to remind him of the ways that Stan’s face had been different from his own.

There were only two things he was sure he’d remember forever: the way his brother’s smile had crumbled under Ford’s fist, and the last mournful look Stan had given him before he transformed.

“Hey, Stan, listen . . .” The girl began. He didn’t see who responded, only heard the soft, heavy, “Oh.” And then there were hands at his back, pulling at Stan’s jacket. He let them lift him up.

“Stanford . . . help me get the kids inside, okay?”

He nodded mutely, but it was the children who led him, holding tightly to his hands as they made their way up the beach. Above the tideline they found the pile of things that had appeared with them. Dipper picked up his sealskin—their sealskin—and he and Mabel each took one end. Ford knew he should pick up the other things. Red sweater. Brown boots. Tan coat. But he couldn’t bring himself to let go of the children’s hands. In the end the redheaded girl gathered them up for him, and they followed her up towards the wreck of the house.

*

There were rocks, too small to be considered islands, too remote to be of interest to humans, where he would leave supplies. It had taken him some half-dozen trips back and forth before he was sure he’d copied the mural correctly into his journal.

There were so many secrets in this town, so many things that only someone like him could see. The cave where he’d discovered the mural was deep and remote and the tunnel that led to it was narrow; no human could have found it. Who knew how long it had sat undiscovered, unstudied, before he chanced upon it? Who knew how many more mysteries were waiting for him to solve them? Finally, he could truly be himself, combine his studies and his powers and change the world. Finally, he could be happy.

The swimming had exhausted him. He laid down his pen and wrapped the sealskin close around him. Safer to be a seal out here; there were no predators as dangerous as curious humans could be. He stretched as the change took him, curled up into a banana posture and reveled at the feeling of the rocks below his belly, at the sound of the waves the surrounded him.

Ford slept.

And dreamed.

He awoke certain that someone was watching him and looked around in a panic, but there was nothing there. Nothing, except for the periwinkles that glimmered like searching eyes and a voice in his head. 

*

“Well, the electricity still works,” said Wendy, picking her way through the ruined kitchen. “Sorry we don’t have any milk. I’ll get my dad to go to the store later.” She set a mug of coffee down in front of him.

“I don’t take milk.”

“Sorry.” Wendy winced. “I wasn’t thinking. I just made it the way—”

“Stan liked it,” said Ford. “I know.” He took a sip, struggling to keep his face still as the sweetness hit him. It was like coffee-flavored syrup, and it seemed to stick in his throat in a way that had nothing to do with its consistency.

“Likes.”

Ford looked up at Mabel, who was stuffing her mug with miniature marshmallows.

“Likes,” she said again. “You said ‘liked.’ He’s out there somewhere and we’re gonna save him. Don’t talk about him like he’s . . .”

Of course. He should have realized that the children wouldn’t be ready to hear the past tense yet. For Ford it already came naturally. The last few weeks had only been a brief respite in forty years of it. At first it was a way of distancing himself from his old life. Then in the Portal he’d honestly believed that he’d never see Stanley, or anyone in this dimension, again. If anything, it was the present that had felt strange to him, admitting that Stan was there in front of him and not just a figment lurking in the depths of his head. Admitting that future tense had been, for a brief while, a possibility. It was a possibility that he’d been too hurt and afraid to consider when he had the chance, and now it was gone. Stan was gone.

And the sealskin was gone, too. Ford plucked at the edge of his coat, waiting for the ache in his chest to abate enough that he could speak. He’d have to move inland. He couldn’t stay here; the tide would pull out his heart.

“Mabel,” said Ford, as gently as he could, “He’s not coming back. There’s nothing we can do. I’m sorry.”

She shook her head. “I know I can get him back! I just need to figure out how!” She picked up her overflowing mug and left the table. Her brother was about to follow when Ford caught him by the shoulder.

“Dipper, listen to me. We need to make her understand. She can’t keep hoping like this.”

For a moment the boy’s expression was inscrutable. Then he smiled, small and sad and quick as a flash of sun on the waves, and shook his head. “Great Uncle Ford,” he said. “It’s Mabel. She’s always going to hope.”

“But she’ll get hurt.”

“It would hurt her more not to,” said Dipper, and he turned away, almost apologetically, to follow after his sister.

Ford watched them go. Perhaps Dipper was right. Perhaps they needed this. All Ford knew was that he couldn’t allow himself to hope, not for a second. If he did and then that hope was shattered, he wouldn’t make it inland. He’d put the children on the bus home and then he’d wait until the tide was high, weigh down his pockets with scrap from the Portal, and walk out into the sea.

*

You can’t trust humans, his mother had told him when they parted. If they don’t kill you outright they’ll just break your heart, trap you away from the sea until you go mad with longing for it.

But there were no libraries in the ocean, and in time the lure of knowledge proved nearly as strong as the lure of the sea. Ma kissed him goodbye and then turned and swam for the distant colonies where humans didn’t come. She’d refused to set foot on land again. But before she left she’d given him a phone number, making him repeat it over and over until she was sure he had it right.

Ford stood shivering in the phone booth, naked except for his sealskin around his shoulders and an abandoned beach towel around his waist, and dialed. The phone rang three times and then a deep, rolling baritone voice answered him. “This is the Stranding Network.”

The woman who picked him up was pale as bleached driftwood, and though her hair was still thick and dark and her face unlined she moved with the careful deliberation of the very old. Her skin had been destroyed, she told him. The Network was full of others like her, selkies who had no hope of returning to the sea. They did what they could to look after their kind.

They were able to get him a place at college. Not any of the high-ranked ones he’d been looking at, but Ocean University did have a library, and labs, and waves crashing just a few hundred feet from his door.

He bought a long coat with his work-study earnings and bound his sealskin into the lining so that he could always feel it, heavy and comforting, at his back. And then he threw himself into his studies with the same zeal with which occasionally, on moonless nights when the ache in his chest was too much, he would throw himself into the sea.

*

Mabel sat at the end of the dock, her small bare feet dangling off the side. The wind whipped her braid around her face, whipped her words out over the ocean. Her sweater was blue and her skirt was green, and she would have blended into the sea like she was part of it were it not for the bright pink book she had clutched in her lap

“What’s she doing?” Ford asked. They'd had to fight hard to convince the girl that it was too dangerous for her to go out searching in seal form, but she'd seemed, eventually, to understand. He'd thought that perhaps she'd accepted things now.

“It’s her scrapbook,” said Dipper. “All the memories from the summer. She’s reading it in case Stan can hear her.”

Ford shook his head. “It’s not healthy for her to—”

“She needs to feel like she tried everything,” said Dipper. “It’s how she copes with things. You’ve just gotta let her work it out and be here when she crashes.”

Ford fiddled with the hem of his coat. He had to go into town and buy new clothes. Whenever he looked down at himself he remembered Stan in that outfit, the last look of acceptance on his face before he swam off to die in payment for Ford’s mistakes. Ford had used the coat to ground himself through all the years he didn’t have his sealskin, but now it felt tainted, accusatory.

“You . . . understand each other very well.”

Dipper shrugged. “She’s my sister. I get her.”

He walked down the dock and sat down cross-legged beside Mabel, unwrapping their sealskin from his own shoulders and tucking it around hers. She leaned into him for a moment before sitting up straight again, calling her memories out to the sea with a new determination. Dipper held on to one corner of the skin, and sometimes he jumped in with stories of his own when Mabel’s voice flagged.

After a while a worn-down pickup truck pulled into the driveway: the others back from their trip into town. He helped them carry in groceries and bags from the hardware store.

“I told people what happened,” said Wendy. “Well, enough of it. They won’t bother you, but they’ll help how they can.”

“What did you tell them?” Ford found himself asking.

“Said he was lost at sea.” Wendy pushed a stack of ready-to-eat meals into the freezer. “This used to be a fishing town. They know how to deal with that.”

When everything was put away, Wendy and Soos went out to join the twins on the dock. Ford stood near the house, just close enough that he could hear what they were saying. As he listened to a side of his brother’s life that he'd known nothing about, he kept his face turned away so that this time they wouldn’t be able to see him cry.

*

When you left the land you had to leave it completely. That’s what his mother told him when he hauled out on the dock of Glass Shard Beach for the last time. He’d wanted to go back—for his books, for his wallet. For his brother.

But Ma shook her head. There was always a ring of moisture around seals’ eyes, but he suspected that if she were still a human she would have been crying. You can’t have half a life, she told him, in something that wasn’t exactly language. There are humans and there are selkies, and you can’t be both. You have to choose. And your brother has no sealskin, so his choice is already made.

His deliberating had nearly doomed them both—his thoughts shattered by the retort of a rifle—and then he had no choice either. He could leave or he could die. He looked behind him from the safety of the waves, saw his father and brother stand up and his father storm home alone.

He swam up close to Stan that night as he slept. He wasn’t sure what he intended to do. Perhaps check that his brother was all right. Perhaps say his goodbyes. But when Stan awoke and reached out to him, all Ford could do was turn as fast as he could and swim for the open sea. The sight of his brother’s face made his chest ache again, the way it used to, the way it wasn’t supposed to anymore.

But Stan would be all right. He had to be. Surely Filbrick would soften in a day or so: they were both human, after all. Stan belonged on land and Ford belonged at sea and that was the way of it, and any time he felt the sting of regret stir in his mind he would dive deep until the water soothed it away. 

*

“Mabel, look!!”

Ford turned at the excited babble of voices. They’d probably just seen a rock or a seabird. He knew how insidious hope could be, what it did to people. It took him a moment to see what they were pointing at: a sleek dark shape amid the waves. The seal was bottling, staring straight at them with its dark wild eyes. It could be any seal, and even if by some chance it was the one that had once been his brother there was nothing they could do. Mabel was young and stubborn and looking for the wrong type of fairy tale.

“Keep going!”

“Yeah, Mabel, go on!”

“Okay, okay!” The girl’s hands trembled as she flipped back to the beginning of the book. She balanced it on her lap, the page spread facing out towards the ocean. “Here we are on our first day in Gravity Cove! Here’s the friend I made out of my pretzel bag from the bus, and here’s me and Dipper, and that’s you, Grunkle Stan!”

The seal vanished below the water, and Ford let out the breath that had been caught in his throat. Soos laid a comforting hand on Mabel’s back, but she kept reading as if nothing had happened. Ford shook his head, tried to drown the tiny part of his heart that had wanted to believe in miracles, just for a moment. He couldn’t keep listening. He turned and began to walk back to the house.

Then Dipper gasped. Slowly, Ford turned his head. The seal had emerged again, closer this time. He could make out individual spots on its head. It floated there as Mabel read, and then, slowly, it began to move closer. At last it was only a few feet away from the children.

It wasn’t unusual for seals to show interest in humans. They would follow boats, sometimes, haul out on docks. That was all this was. A seal who hadn’t learned that trusting in humans would get it killed.

It barked. Mabel jumped, but then she reached out her hand, muttering soft words that Ford couldn’t hear. The seal held out its nose and nuzzled her fingers.

“Hold my feet!” she yelled, twisting around until she was lying on her belly. She held the scrapbook out over the edge of the dock, right in front of the seal’s face. It looked up at her, and barked again, and then it reached gently forward and touched the page with its nose.

“Yes!” Mabel cried, and the seal didn’t move away despite the noise. “That’s you! I knew you’d remember!”

Even if he remembers he can’t turn back, thought the logical portion of Ford’s mind. The gun took the magic away. We can’t undo that. He’s gone. But the rest of him had already bypassed logic and sent him running as fast as his feet could take him toward the end of the dock.

*

As he grew older, Ford knew that there was something missing, some emptiness inside him that he didn’t know how to fill. When he tried to tell Stan about it, his brother only ever talked about adventures, but Ford knew that wasn’t what he needed.

Perhaps his studies could fill it. Not where he was, at a second-rate high school in a dead-end town, but someday. It was the only solution he could think of, as the years went past and the ache in his chest grew so keen he thought it might split him apart.

And then one day he was at school late, working on the project that might get him out of this mess of a town, when his mother showed up and grabbed him by the shoulder. Her movements were quick and nervous as a shorebird’s, and when he asked her what was wrong she laughed giddily and shook her head.

“Just come on,” she said. “Come with me.”

Ford laid down his pliers with a sigh. “Ma, are you drunk?”

“No,” she said, and laughed again, “No, I’m so much better than that. Come on, baby. We don’t have much time.”

He let her drag him down to the beach, if only because he was too concerned to leave her alone. She’d been smiling the whole time, except when he’d tried to suggest that they go home instead.

“No!” she snapped, baring her teeth at him. “Never again.”

When they reached the shore, she kicked off her shoes and let down her hair and waded out into the water. Ford was trying to determine whether he was strong enough to drag her back out when she pulled something from her bag. Two somethings, both flowing and silver-brown, but one much smaller than the other. She tossed one to him. As soon as his hands closed around the sealskin his nervousness stilled.

Ma Pines wrapped her own skin around her shoulders, turned to laugh triumphantly back at the town that had trapped her, and then dove into the surf. A sleek, dark seal’s head broke the water’s surface. She barked, and Ford knew that she was cursing the town, cursing his father, and that she was calling her son to come join her.

He looked back, just for a moment, and he could see the window his mother sat in while she worked. From this distance the blinds across it looked like bars.

He pulled off his shoes and socks, tugged his shirt over his head, and followed her.

*

The great bull seal was hauled out on the dock by the time Ford reached them. If he’d had any doubts about the creature’s identity, they vanished when he saw the long scar on its side. Mabel was snuggled up next to the seal, one arm around its neck and her scrapbook open in front of them. The others hovered in a concerned semicircle, and Ford stood with them, not daring to step any closer in case he somehow broke the spell.

“And here’s the time you took us fishing as humans, and _here’s_ the time you took us fishing as seals, and—”

Something slammed into the back of Ford’s legs. He stumbled forward while Mabel’s pig charged past him. It snuffled at the scrapbook, then licked Mabel’s face and the seal’s face indiscriminately. Ford stiffened; no animal would remain calm at such a sudden and intense intrusion. But the seal only barked and tried ineffectually to wave the pig away with one flipper. From where he was kneeling on the dock Ford laughed. He laughed, and Mabel looked up with shining eyes.

“You remember Ford, don’t you?” she asked the seal. “You remember your brother.”

Ford met the creature’s eyes. They were deep and dark as the sea, and they twinkled in the late evening light.

The seal raised a flipper and reached out towards him, the phalanges spread wide. Ford held out his own hand, and they matched, even the extra nail on the seal’s flipper.

“High six,” Ford whispered, and the seal—Stan, it was Stan, Ford couldn’t keep denying it any longer—barked at him, and he threw himself forwards, his arms around the seal’s neck as he cried into its fur. It seemed to be the cue the others needed; they all crowded around Stan, telling their own stories, and Ford felt other arms brush his own as they all fell to their knees and embraced the seal.

He felt rather than saw the change. It was like he’d been holding a sail and the wind suddenly calmed. He dropped a few inches, landing on something bony.

Ford opened his eyes. Even through the blur of his tears he could see his brother, still wrapped in the now-loose folds of the sealskin, but now gloriously, impossibly human.

Mabel screamed with joy, not waiting for Stan to roll off his stomach before she tackled him.

“Hey, pumpkin,” Stan rasped. He pushed himself up until he was half-seated, wrapping his niece in one burly arm.

Mabel’s initial scream petered out, and she was laughing and crying at the same time. “Grunkle Stan . . .” she kept saying, clinging to Stan’s neck with all her might. “Grunkle Stan . . .”

“I got ya,” he said. “Don’t think you can get rid of me that easy.”

And then Stan practically vanished from Ford’s view under the whirlwind of hugs. Dipper threw himself at Stan’s shoulder and was caught up in his other arm; Wendy knelt at his back with her arms around him and both the twins, and Soos, who was also laughing through his tears, caught the whole group of them up in a bear hug that lifted them several inches off the ground.

Once Soos set them down, Stan looked up at Ford, who was kneeling just far enough away that he hadn’t been caught up in the embrace.

“Oh, heh, right,” said Stan. He gestured down at the skin wrapped around him. “I guess this is yours.”

“No!” said Ford, loud enough that he surprised even himself. “No,” he said again. “It’s ours.”

Stan gawped, opening his mouth and shutting it as he stared up at his brother.

Mabel let out a huff of exasperation. She grabbed one of Ford’s hands and tugged him forward into the pile of bodies. He wrapped his arms around Stan’s barrel chest and felt the children’s small hands on his back. They held him there, safe and sheltered, and he felt like he’d passed from the open sea into the mouth of a harbor, his family’s arms like breakwaters around him.

*

When the twins were small, their mother would tell them stories, and they didn’t realize until later that none of her stories ended happily.

“It’s ‘cause she’s a grown-up,” said Stan.

“It’s because she has to save all her happy stories for lying to clients,” said Ford, and they laughed.

Ford lay back, looking up at the mast of the ruined sailboat they’d found, up to where their shirts streamed and billowed in the wind. Beside him, Stan chattered on and waved his arms, spinning his own stories about the future. At the time it seemed as wide as the horizon and as bright as the sun on the waves.

Later, they’d learn that no matter how smart or strong they were the sorrow would catch up to them, sure as the incoming tide.

Later still, they'd learn that sorrow didn't have to be the end of things. The story would continue. The children would grow up. The tide would go out again.

 


End file.
